[FarFromEer]

The 2054 season having just concluded, it becomes a time of reflection for the 106 year old head coach. Does he continue on with the passion that has driven him for so long in his career? For Nick Saban, is it enough to have won 20 national titles and over 700 games? Only he knows if he will be on the sidelines as the Crimson Tide take the field at the start of the 2055 season.


What does any of that have to do with unlocking the "potential" of the game? Nothing, other than needing to to pick a coach that isn't going to get fired while you sim a lot of seasons to collect data (I collected the save files from 2018-2054). I've been trying to see what works and doesn't work (like blocking strength and footwork ratings) behind the scenes of the game using the editor and for this post, focused on the potential (PPOE) rating field all recruits and players have. The values range from 40-99 and is somewhat inversely related to the player's initial overall rating:

Spoiler

PPOE Avg OVR for Freshmen prior to training
40 68.09
41 65.30
42 65.18
43 64.71
44 64.18
45 64.49
46 63.94
47 63.68
48 64.13
49 63.38
50 63.64
51 63.03
52 63.52
53 62.78
54 62.41
55 61.47
56 62.14
57 61.04
58 60.45
59 60.76
60 60.12
61 59.88
62 59.70
63 59.09
64 59.19
65 59.21
66 57.94
67 57.45
68 58.00
69 58.16
70 56.57
71 57.81
72 58.54
73 58.18
74 56.50
75 55.96
76 55.17
77 56.66
78 57.94
79 56.32
80 56.25
81 55.99
82 55.40
83 56.67
84 54.63
85 54.15
86 52.80
87 53.64
88 53.33
89 52.09
90 52.31
91 53.27
92 44.50
93 52.00
94 48.88
95 50.40
96 54.83
97 50.90
98 49.67
99 49.34

I measured the season ending training results for all players with an OVR >40 and <99. I intentionally ignored in-season skill changes and only recorded the change from the weeks before and after training results. In all, there are 254,596 data points in my analysis, with each player can have up to four data points in the set. The majority of all generated players (50.8%) have a potential rating of 40. Here are the results of the data:

Spoiler

PPOE Players Avg OVR Increase
40 129373 4.47
41 7443 4.43
42 7760 4.44
43 5539 4.43
44 6685 4.44
45 6759 4.43
46 6220 4.61
47 5548 4.61
48 7245 4.61
49 5204 4.59
50 5376 4.60
51 5355 4.60
52 5136 4.81
53 4588 4.76
54 5131 4.70
55 3023 4.75
56 3799 4.78
57 3574 4.80
58 2791 4.91
59 3087 4.91
60 3244 4.90
61 1959 4.89
62 2061 4.91
63 2292 4.86
64 1887 5.06
65 1944 5.13
66 1309 5.10
67 960 4.95
68 1084 5.03
69 1203 5.06
70 982 5.27
71 981 5.14
72 876 5.32
73 690 5.31
74 399 5.21
75 415 5.39
76 428 5.56
77 313 5.28
78 258 5.37
79 323 5.50
80 193 5.62
81 276 5.42
82 108 5.39
83 84 5.54
84 123 5.47
85 62 5.74
86 98 5.97
87 40 5.53
88 14 5.57
89 39 5.87
90 49 5.90
91 45 5.93
92 12 5.25
93 9 5.56
94 27 6.00
95 13 6.15
96 14 6.29
97 37 5.95
98 19 5.89
99 90 6.46

What can you do with this information? Without the editor, not much, other than knowing that low OVR players may have better training results than higher OVR players. However, it is there, and it does work. Roster editors can utilize this to affect how players develop in the off season. Personally, I have incorporated it into my recruiting spreadsheet. When recruiting between two very similar recruits, it could become the x factor that has me choosing one over the other.